Examining the Past for Improvement Insights
Toward the end of last year, something just didn't sit right with me in terms of my overall level of contentment. After much hemming and hawing, I decided to engage a coach. During one of our first meetings, she asked me to take a trip down memory lane and see what emerges.
I spent several hours painstakingly moving from year to year and writing down what I remembered. I did my best to remain non-judgmental, noted the outcome and what I remembered to have been thinking or feeling at the time. After a while, I started to see patterns in the captured data—themes that have influenced how I approached both my work life and my personal life. Once I named a recurring theme, I could then decide if it was something I wanted to bring forward or leave in the past. It also shed light on what I was not doing and could benefit from doing more.
As I was contemplating this exercise, I was struck at how similar it is to a retrospective conducted after a work project. Through utilizing a simple framework, in my case it was a timeline, you can reconstruct an experience and then extract valuable learnings from it. At that point, you can make an executive decision about what you want to carry forth versus what would be best left behind.
MAD, SAD, GLAD Brainstorm Template
If you are used to managing projects or have been certified in a project management discipline, this is probably second nature for you. So I challenge you to try this on yourself or on a team that you work with frequently. If this is a new concept, here are a few things to keep in mind.
Find a dedicated time and space to do this work. Make sure it’s quiet and unencumbered by other appointments in your schedule. Schedule dedicated time for this review, if necessary.
Free your mind from distractions. If alone, you will want to be able to spend your thinking and reflection time on the topic at hand. If on a team, the right ice breaker could break down barriers to communication so that the team can transition into a listening and learning state.
Utilize a framework to organize your thoughts, and excavate buried memories. Using more than one framework can recover even more insights. My favorite frames are a timeline and Start, Stop & Continue. Other cool ones include Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For or Mad Sad Glad.
Don't judge. No one likes their shortcomings to be highlighted. It can be toxic to dwell on your own shortcomings as well as your team members. As such, plan to withhold any judgment from this exercise.
Evaluate and edit. This is the time to decide what moves forward with you and what gets left behind.
This retrospective exercise can help both individuals and teams decide what is working, what they need to focus on and what can be released. My own exercise revealed a few things I needed to leave behind and resulted in me finally moving forward with a goal that had been the proverbial can kicked down the road year after year. No more!
